Picture of the white house this afternoon, still waiting for that News Conference with president ial candidate, joe biden, to get started. When it starts, we plan to bring it to you live here on cspan. There is also a News Conference with members of the Term Campaign set to begin at 3 30 p. M. Eastern. Coverage, here on cspan. Earlier today, the governor of pennsylvania gave an update on the race in that state. ,wolf good morning everybody. Good to have you back. Yesterday was election day. Election officials are still at work counting the votes. In fact, a lot of the county Election Officials still have work to do. I want to start by saying thank you to all the staff, the volunteers who worked so hard to count those votes. And are still working hard to count them. The promise of democracy is that every vote counts, and that has been the promise of democracy since 1987. It is still the promise of democracy. I intend here in pennsylvania to make sure we keep that promise. So, as i said, counties continue to report results, and again, these results are coming in more slowly than they have in the past. So we have to be patient. These votes are going to be counted, they are going to be counted accurately, and they will be counted fully. Seeing is a are sign that the system is working. This is a new system. Went into effect last year and there are 3 million millions of mailin ballots that are being counted. That takes longer than the way we used to do it with the stand in in person voting. We may not know results even today, but the most important we have, that accurate results. Even if it takes a little longer than we are used to. Make no mistake, our democracy is being tested in this election. This is a stress test of the ideals upon which this country was founded. And the basic rule of one person, one vote, that still carries, and it has to carry here. Democracy has endured challenges before and over 200 years for over 200 years, we have strengthened our commitment to fairness and due process. I have full faith we will similarly make this moment, and i will do everything within my power to ensure that the results are fair and that every vote is counted. Pennsylvania will have a fair election. And that election will be free of outside influences. I will vigorously, and we all will vigorously defend against any attempt to attack that vote in pennsylvania. Pennsylvanian can have confidence in the outcome of this election due to the diligence of the county Election Officials and the hard work of the secretary and her folks at the Pennsylvania Department of state. Thank you again to all pennsylvanians who voted. Rest assured, your vote will be counted if it has not already been counted. Your vote will make a difference in this election. We electhe way officials, hire people who are public servants. It is the promise we give to all pennsylvanians come all americans, that their vote counts. I intend to keep that promise here in pennsylvania. Nowuld like to turn it over. Good morning. I want to echoes some of what Governor Wolf said about once again thanking all the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of election workers that were and are still involved of enabling this great democracy in pennsylvania and across the nation. The work they have done and continue to do is just tremendous. Folks,artment of state at 4 30peration center, in the morning, went to take a shower and were back within a couple of hours of that. They have been working around the clock, as are many of the counties. We have been working about, yesterday, again, and how incredibly smooth it was. It was the smoothest, least issues president ial election that i have seen in any time that i could possibly remember. And i have been around elections for a long time as a Voting Rights lawyer and a poll worker. This was incredibly smooth. A huge credit to all the election workers, both at the state level and at the local level, as well as the state theners, Like Department of homeland security, who made sure all those things people were worried about, whether it was voter intimidation, issues at the could not have gone more smoothly in the middle of a global pandemic, with all the voting reform changes that we saw from act 77 and act 12. Huge kudos to everybody involved. We are exactly where we said we would be. We said it was going to take ount the mailc ballots. We are approaching 50 counted. Which is great. As you know, you can go to our Election Night returns website and the supplemental dashboard to get the greater details on that. But there are still millions of ballots left to be counted. So, the counties are working incredibly hard. You are going to see a lot of updates in the next couple of hours and throughout the day. We have been there are a number of counties that make some major additions in the wee hours in the morning. Early on thisked morning, you may want to check again, because theres already been more ballots accounted for on our dashboard. Again, this is a process. We have got i dont know what the totals are going to wind up as, but somewhere between 2. 5 and 3 million ballots. Had said many times, we 260,000 ballots cast by mail in 2016, so we will be at 10 times the number of mailin ballots. And the counties are already approaching 50 done. I urge everybody to remain patient. As the governor said, we are going to accurately count every single ballot. The vote count, as i said many times, is never done on the day of Election Night. And the counties are doing this accurately, and then accurately, as quickly as they possibly can. I will also just remind everyone, military and overseas ballots are not due until a week after election day. So next tuesday is the deadline for military and overseas voters to cast their ballots, and we want to make sure that not only every civilian absentee and mailin ballot is counted, but also every man and woman serving our country, that their votes are counted. So thank you, and we are happy to take questions. Should i stay . Governor wolf any questions . Yes . Therter what you know of challenges, and legal challenges of the jump administration, and how you are preparing to deal with those. Basically, what you know thats been publicly reported, thats really all we have at this point. I cant talk about active litigation. Unfortunately. Of course,re filed, that will be publicly accessible. Reporter are you bringing in somebody from the outside . Who would that be . Larry what we have been doing all along with other litigation is we have a mix of inhouse and outside counsel. Plus the attorney general is also representing us in a number of these things. Its been a great team. Attorney, just going to give a shout out to the legal team in the department of state, who have been really put to work this year. They are amazing. Team, thank you. But we also have tremendous teams of outside counsel who have been involved in all of this. As a governor said, we will make sure as the governor said, we will make sure that every vote is counted, every eligible voter has a right to cast their vote. Reporter how many counties are handling ballots that are coming in tuesday, friday, how are they handling that . How is each county doing it . Ourou can go online to see guidance. Last night, we also give more technical guidance to the counties, which we can forward to you. It basically lays out the process. Going to bes segregated. Not sure if you were here yesterday. But all those ballots we segregated will be counted. The counties have been given detailed instructions that you can find in those guidances to walk them through how to segregate those ballots. Reporter can you talk about the order in which those things will be counted . Is that a county by county decision . Can we expect to see those numbers being already reflected . Basically, it will depend. Some counties have already done their melon ballots received before it 00 p. M. Those will not be reflected on the website. It will not be intermingled as you see it now. They will be segregated. But it is going to vary county to county when they start, because they are working on the other ones first. Reporter [indiscernible] on the website, though . I am unclear about that. Stay tuned. Reporter the were hundreds of thousands of ballots issued that were not counted yesterday . There were 500,000 mail ballots issued that had not been cast as of yesterday. Is there a way for the state to determine how many of those 500,000 people chose to vote in person instead . Or do we need to operate under the assumption that all 500,000 could come in before friday . All that will be trackable. But we will not have it today. Basically, between provisional ballots and the pull books, then of course, the mailin ballots, as you all know, only one vote can be counted for any voter. So you will be able to see all of that, but it will take some time for the data to be chronic be the data to quantified. Reporter do we know how many ballots arrived yesterday . What is the number . I dont have that with me this morning, but check on the dashboard, and that will be updated throughout the day. Yes. Sorry. Reporter they keep raising this point about how ballots that arrived yesterday can still be but may not have a legible postmark on them, raising questions about whether or not they should be counted or not. Because of prepaid envelopes that the state provided. Im wondering if you could speak to that. Anything that arrived yesterday, doesnt matter if it is postmarked or not. Anything that arrived yesterday, that is what pennsylvania law has always been. Lateng about the arriving ballots. The way we did prepaid postage in pennsylvania is, we went to the counties where they are. If we wanted to be through their Business Reply mail, usps permit, we did it that way. And them are not even i dont remember how many, but we can get you that information. How many counties are using Business Reply mail. But those are still postmarked. They have timing marks, they are date stamps, they are still trackable by date. It is a tiny fraction of any of those things, whether it is Business Reply mail or regular mail. We have all had that situation where you get a letter that is not postmarked. It is your. Same for Business Reply mail. It is rare. It is not accurate. They are all stamped. In those rare occasions, would it be counted . Under the Current Supreme Court decision that is currently the law, yes. As long as there is no affirmative evidence it was postmarked after november 3, as long as it is received by november 6 by 5 00 p. M. , it will be counted. Reporter it is my understanding ones side of the state is showing 18 counties with 0 maili mailin ballots counted. Is that accurate . Sometimes, counties are uploading on their own website and have not transmitted the file to the the primitive state. They have their own local races. We are going to be following up with all those counties to say, hey, make sure you get is the file us the files. Because for the first time, we had the website that was going to itemize the mailin ballots from the inperson ballots from the provisionals, some of the counties, when the uploaded the results, it merged the two types into one, and that was reformatted from. Wrong. We are working to make sure the actual attributions of those ballots are right. Reporter theres a larger number of counties that have reported is just notan it reported to the department of state. I do urge you to check the county website and see if that is available on the website. Reporter if i can just double back, if i heard you correctly, it was between 2. 5 and 3 million mailin ballots . If you can speak with as much specificity as possible regarding that, that would be helpful. The numbers that i give yesterday, it was just under 2. 6 million, as i recall. Again, im not sure what has additionally come in. Yesterday, at some point, it was just under 2. 6 million that had been cast. That is what i think i said it 83 , or Something Like that. We can get back to you. Go on the website. You will have that Information Available to you. I just not have it at my fingertips today. Reporter can you tell me how many mailin ballots are outstanding . It is on the website. If you go to the regular enr reporting website, it also tells you that you can click on the supplemental dashboard. Downlick on that, it takes , theres a from mail ballots that breaks it down by county, how many have been cast, how many have been counted, and how many are remaining. Person a tap for in present reporting broken down by county. It will tell you how many precincts are in each county, how many are reported. Theres a provisional ballot, but you will not see those numbers yet. Okay. Thank you. What Lancaster County is saying is that if they count anything you are authorizing to segregate, they will not be able to go back and remove those counts. What is your response to that . It is not accurate